Disclaimer: I don't own anything, least of all The WB's Supernatural.
"Alchemy," Sam says, flipping through books chosen from the pile in the corner. As usual his sister had managed an inordinate amount of organization. Sure they may both be sort of neat freaks, but she had taken this to a new level. It probably took as long to put all this stuff together as it did to find and collect it in the first place. "This whole pile is stuff about alchemy," he says, glancing back at his brother.
Dean responds simply with a wave of the hand, a quick leave me alone gesture. His back is to Sam as he sits on the bed, the old motel phone receiver sandwiched between his ear and shoulder. He's been on hold for nearly five minutes while the Danbury Mental Health Clinic in Vermont works to find Teresa Polar's file. His patience, of course, ran out about four minutes and thirty seconds ago.
"Some of the pages are marked. In all of these," Sam says out loud, though he obviously is talking more to himself than Dean. "Underlined, highlighted, I can't tell what all is important and what's not. It's like everything – "
"Sam!"
He turns around from his spot on the floor and met with a threatening glare. "You're on hold," he says, shaking his head, unswayed by his brother's show. He returns to the page before him and reads while trying to ignore the angry eyes burning into the back of his head.
"Yeah, I'm still here." Finally he's taken off hold. "Yeah, yeah, faxing them would be great," he says into the phone, then, "Sam," he hisses, covering the mouthpiece. "I need a fax number." Sam gives him an incredulous look. What do you want me to do about it? And Dean sighs, rubs his eyes as he thinks of something to say. "You know what," he continues into the phone, "my fax isn't actually up yet. We just switched offices and – " He waits as the voice on the other line drones on. "Hey, yeah, that would be great," he says, sitting upright. "That's right, Roseville. Yeah, small town, I know." A pause on his end. "Uh huh, we just moved from Fort Worth. Yeah, well – " Interrupted again. "Hey, great. Oh, yeah, I think I've seen it. 4th and Everston, right, sounds familiar. Hey you're a lifesaver. What's your name again?" he asks in his charm-filled I'll-flirt-with-you-all-day-if-that's-what-it-takes way. "Cindy. Well, Cindy, you are amazing." The voice on the other end softens even more and lets out a girlish giggle, proving that the 100-watt I-can-get-whatever-I-want smile is perceivable even over the phone. "No, thank you," he says before hanging up.
"No, thank you," Sam mocks from his corner.
"I gotta go into town. There's a Kinko's she's gonna fax the medical records to."
"Are you kidding me? She's faxing confidential information like that to a Kinko's?"
"Yeah, she didn't seem too bright," he says, jumping up and slipping into his jacket. "But as long as it works to our advantage, right?"
"Yeah, I guess," Sam says, still flipping through dusty pages. "Hey, listen to this. 'According to certain Kabbalistic theories, while mankind and, in truth, most of creation is thought to be representative of all four of the basic elements, the shedim are considered to have been created only out of fire and air.' Huh."
"The she-what?"
"Shedim. Demons."
Dean stands for a minute, his brows knitted with confusion, before shaking off the odd bit of information and turning to leave. "Yeah, whatever. I'll be back."
One hour and two coffees later Dean strides back into the little motel room, both buzzed and burnt out. He sets all his papers down on the table, looks to the corner and sees Sam sitting in front of the wall of books, legs crossed, just as he left him. He sits down at the table, taps his fingers for a moment and jumps back up, paces a few steps and quickly turns on his heel. "Anything?" he asks, too loud, too obtrusive.
Sam's head pop's up and he gives his brother a what's with you look before shaking his head. "Not really. You?"
"No," he says, continuing his pacing. As though an after thought he stops and removes his jacket.
"You get the records?" Sam asks, rising and stretching. His legs ache from lack of use and his neck is so stiff he can barely move his head.
"Yeah. Nothing's really in them though. I mean, she checked herself in, said she was depressed. Supposedly she had a manic episode her third day there, that's when they started the Lithium. But it doesn't really give any details."
"How long was she there?"
"Two weeks. It was last month. The day she checked herself out, that was the day she called."
"The day Dad called," he says plainly as he strides over to the table where Dean has just sat down.
"Yeah," he says, pushing his fingers through his hair clearly frustrated.
"You think she was faking?" Dean looks up at him confused. "The mania. The depression too. I mean, do you think she was faking it all?"
"I don't know." His voice comes out reeking of exhaustion despite the anxious and energized tapping of his foot.
"The pill bottle's full. She hasn't taken anything. If it were real…I mean if she really were sick, she probably would have been taking the medication, right?" No response. "I'm just saying, she's a little nuts sometimes, but she's not crazy. So why'd she go there?" Nothing. "Dean?"
"I don't know," he says slowly, angrily, the words slithering out from in between his clenched teeth. The two brothers share a tense stare before Dean finally breaks his eyes away and throws his head back in an exasperated sigh. "A couple of weeks ago I would have said no way. No way is she crazy, bi-polar, or delusional, or whatever. But this…this," he says, sweeping his arm to indicated everything in the room, "is crazy." He pauses briefly and rubs his eyes, shoving his fingertips into his lids until his vision is filled with tiny lights and bright shooting colors.
"It means something. It might seem crazy, but it all means something," Sam says as he makes his way back over to the far wall. "I've been going through all this stuff and I think you're right. It's like everything here, even things that seemingly have no connection…all of it leads to the same place. Or led her to it anyway. It's all about demons, most of it. It all comes back to demons. So Dad calls out of no where and says that Mom and Jess were killed by a demon and meanwhile Tess is compiling a whole library on the subject. It's not a coincidence, Dean."
"You think she and Dad talked about it?"
"It'd be an awful big coincidence if the both of them figured all this stuff out at the same time totally independent of each other, don't you think?"
"Yeah, maybe," he says, suddenly more awake. He gets up and moves to the bedside table where Tessa's cell phone still sits.
"What are you doing?"
"Seeing who she's called." They already went through all over voicemails earlier in the day, finding only two, both being from Dean. But the call log had only a few random numbers. "Look these up, will ya?" he says tossing Sam the phone. Dutifully, Sam heads to the laptop and types away as Dean begins to clean off the bed, being careful not to shuffle the papers, keeping them in their neat piles. "So what kind of stuff did you find?"
"Huh?" he asks, still typing away. "Oh, um, I didn't get very far. There's a lot of stuff here. Most of what I read so far was about fire and how it can be manipulated by various demons."
"Sounds kind of obvious," Dean offers as he lays the last stack of papers on the floor and moves to lay down on the bed.
"Yeah, well…it's kind of hard to tell what exactly she thought was the most important since so much stuff is marked. But where I am now, I figure she found the connection and decided to pursue it. Just not sure where it led her yet."
"Well I'm all for figuring that out, but if I try to read anything right now I think my eyes might permanently cross."
"Your eyes? I'm the one who's been going through all this stuff for the last four hours.
"Yeah, whatever man," he says, rolling onto his side in the bed. He shifts suddenly when something hard jabs into his temple through the pillow.
"None of the numbers as coming up as listed. They could be pay phones, hotel rooms, something like that. Maybe a place Dad was staying. You know, since he didn't call us from his cell, maybe he wouldn't use it talk to her either." He goes on, scrolling through the pages he's just pulled up while Dean searches for the object beneath his pillow. A Walkman. The headphones had been the perpetrators. "One of the area codes is from Sommerset, Georgia. Another from…Sacramento. That's where Dad called us from," he says, turning to Dean. "What's that?" he asks, indicating his brother's find.
"What does it look like?" he responds smartly before putting on the headphones and pushing play. He sees Sam turn back to the computer screen as the blues guitar unfolds into his ears.
Early this mornin'When you knocked upon my door
Early this mornin', ooh
When you knocked upon my door
And I said, "Hello Satan,
I believe it's time to go."
Me and the Devil
Was walking side by side
Me and the Devil, ooh
Was walking side by side
And I'm goin' to beat my woman
Until I get satisfied.
(Me and the Devil Blues, Robert Johnson)
"Dean. Dean!"
He looks up and sees his brother shouting at him, barely audible from within the confines of the music. He rips off the headphones. "What?"
"The other area code is this one, Roseville."
"Huh," he responds, clearly unable or unwilling to process whether or not that bit of information is really important. He looks down at the Walkman, the CD still turning inside and pushes STOP, removes the disk and reads aloud. "Robert Johnson."
"What?" Dean tosses him the CD and Sam barely catches it, fumbling clumsily.
"Father of blues, Sam. Don't you know anything?"
"I didn't know you were into Blues."
"Precursor of classic rock," he says in a mocking tone as if to say how stupid are you? "Aerosmith, Cream, Zepplin, the Stones. Man, they all worshipped this guy."
"Okay," he says, setting down the CD and returning to his work. "Everywhere I go the numbers come up unlisted."
Clearly ignoring his brother, Dean goes on. "I didn't know she like him though. I mean I tried to teach the kid about it, but she never really seemed to care. You believe that? She'd rather read a book than listen to music."
"What hospital was she in? Where was that, Vermont?" he asks, more to himself than Dean, before punching away at the keyboard some more.
"And it's not like the music stuff isn't interesting too. I mean, even for her and her twisted little, gotta look into everything supernatural mind."
"Danbury, right? Was that just the name of the clinic, or the town too?"
"Like that song, he was totally serious. Well, maybe not really. I mean it's just a legend. But still."
"Danbury Mental Health Clinic. Springsborough, Vermont. Springsborough." He types some more, scrolls down to the bottom of a page and clicks on the link to the area's newspaper archives. Then he picks up the bottle of Lithium, checks the date, types in a few days prior and waits while the next page loads.
"You would think she'd be interested in a guy who supposedly sold his soul to the devil, wouldn't you?" Dean asks, still lost in his own conversation, if it could even be called that.
"What?" Sam asks, whipping around.
"What, what?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Robert Johnson, he sold his soul to the devil." Sam looks at him, confusion washing over his face. "To play the blues," he says, as though that would explain it all. When he still does not respond Dean falls back on the bed, frustration giving way to exhaustion. He digs at his eyes with the heels of his hands. "Never mind. It's just a legend."
Sam turns back to the computer and immediately clicks on the first link that catches his attention. He quickly scans the article, wide eyed, and looks back at Dean, still spread out on the bed. "Four days before checking herself into that clinic something happened in Springsborough, Vermont," he says calmly, a smile playing on his face.
"Yeah," Dean offers sleepily, encouraging him to go on.
"A young woman burst into the police station in the middle of the night rambling on about a beast in her room. A demon that tries to take her husband."
Dean sits up, looks Sam in the eye. "Yeah…"
"Well they thought she was nuts, tried to get her to calm down. She thought they weren't listening to her so she grabbed one of the cop's guns."
"She shoot anybody?"
"No. But it was enough to have her arrested. They sent her, guess where?"
"Danbury."
"Yep."
"Does it say anything else, about what she said, the demon, anything?"
"Nope. But I figure that must have been enough to get Tessa's attention because a few days later is when she checked herself in."
"Ha ha," he laughs. "So she's not crazy after all. She was just doing recon."
"Now," Sam says as he gets up and heads over to the stacks of papers, "if only we knew what she found out."